A top Republican senator blew up Trump's '3-phase plan' for healthcare overhaul

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas on Tuesday blasted the
insistence by GOP leadership and the Trump administration that
their proposed healthcare overhaul would come in three phases.

In defending the American Health Care Act, GOP leaders such as
President Donald Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan, and Health and
Human Services Secretary Tom Price have insisted that the bill is
just step one of three.

"Hugh, there is no three-phase process. There is no three-step
plan. That is just political talk. It's just politicians engaging
in spin. This is why. Step one is a bill that can pass with 51
votes in the Senate. That's what we're working on right now. Step
two, as yet unwritten regulations by Tom Price, which is going to
be subject to court challenge, and therefore, perhaps the whims
of the most liberal judge in America. But step three, some
mythical legislation in the future that is going to garner
Democratic support and help us get over 60 votes in the Senate.
If we had those Democratic votes, we wouldn't need three steps.
We would just be doing that right now on this legislation
altogether. That's why it's so important that we get this
legislation right, because there is no step three. And step two
is not completely under our control."

Put another way, the AHCA is designed to need only a simple
majority to pass the Senate, as it is being moved through a
process known as budget reconciliation. Any other bill introduced
affecting statutory measures would need 60 votes in the Senate,
or Democrats could filibuster it. Cotton was suggesting he
thought it unlikely that any other bill could make it through the
chamber.

Add on, as Cotton said, that any regulation instituted by Price
at HHS could be challenged, and all of a sudden the AHCA could be
Republicans' only chance at controlling an overhaul of the
healthcare system.

The senator on Tuesday also addressed the score given to the bill
by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Cotton said that
while "the CBO director is not Moses" and "he's not walking down
from the mountaintop with stone tablets," there was good reason
to take the report seriously.

"All that said, I think the Congressional Budget Office is
directionally correct," Cotton said. "They're right that coverage
levels will go down in the coming years under the House bill.
They're also right, I'm afraid, that insurance premiums will
continue to go up in the near term, for three to four years,
before they start perhaps falling in the long term."

Cotton said that given those realities, the House GOP needed to
seriously edit the bill before it arrived in the Senate.

"However, I suspect that the political consequences of those
near-term changes means that the long term will never actually
arrive," Cotton said.

He added: "That's why I believe it's so important that the House
take a pause and try to fix some of these fixable problems in
their committees, which is the easiest place in Congress to fix
them, whereas the Senate floor is the hardest place to fix them."